[At-Large] vanity domains and identity, was 9th Circuit Court ruling on ICANN Contract.

[John R. Levine]

> How does the registrar unambiguously identify the registrant ?
> One way of doing that is by applying the same process as is being used 
> for SSL certificates, namely paperwork. This is already being done on a 
> global scale by the CA industry. Of course, this has a cost. That would 
> make domains worth USD 300/year. I shiver at the consequences for the 
> domain industry and registrants.

SSL certs cost about $10 these days, and involve no meaningful identity 
verification.  There's green bar certs, but they're down to $99 and I'm 
sure the usual race to the bottom will happen, leading to yet another 
incarnation of more expensive gold seal certs or something.

> The whole point is that none of the above can be done for USD20/year. 
> What you are suggesting is a fundamental change in the domain name 
> business. I don't necessarily disagree. But among the consequences, it 
> would prevent many individuals from registering domain names.  This 
> bothers me a lot.

I have to say it hardly bothers me at all.  Look at the number of blogs 
and personal websites, then look at the how many of them have their own 
2LDs, and divide to see what fraction has their own domains.  Unless you 
use double precision, it rounds to zero.  Personal vanity domains may have 
seemed important in the 1990s, but now they're largely an anachronism.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly